"But he needs to get in a team that is behind him and can win. That team can't win. He's sort of stuck in neutral there."
But team boss Peter Sauber only has to point to the success of driver Felipe Massa, who has outperformed Villeneuve in almost every race this season.
Last week, Villeneuve qualified three spots ahead of Massa, only to wreck on the first lap and struggle to a ninth-place finish -- one spot out of the points.
Massa, meanwhile, drove to a solid fourth-place finish.
"Jacques has to get faster," Sauber said. "That's all there is to it. His qualifying effort must be better."
Indy might be just the right place to get Villeneuve back in high gear.
Juan Pablo Montoya again was the quickest driver, and this time there was no red stoplight to slow down the Colombian.
Montoya, disqualified while leading the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal last week, was the fastest on Friday in each of the first two sessions of practice for today's race.
His top lap on the 4.1km, 13-turn road course was 1 minute, 11.118 seconds (131.860mph, 212.162kph), just ahead of McLaren teammate Kimi Raikkonen, the winner at Montreal. Ferrari teammates Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher were next.
"Every year, I've come so close to winning this race, and something has always gone wrong," Montoya said. "So it would be nice to come here once and get a pretty quiet weekend and a good result."
Montoya, who won the Indianapolis 500 in 2000 before joining Formula 1, has started no worse than fifth in four previous US GPs. His best finish in the USGP was fourth in 2002, and his last pole at any track was in the German Grand Prix two years ago.
Raikkonen's top speed was 211.836kph. Barrichello had a fast lap at 210.307kph, followed by Schumacher at 210.270kph and Nick Heidfeld at 210.074kph.
NEW ENGINES
Thirteen of the 20 USGP starters will have new engines today.
To cut costs, Formula One this year required engines to last two races. The seven with still one race left before they may replace their old engines are McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen, Toyota's Ralf Schumacher, Sauber's Felipe Massa and Jacques Villeneuve, BAR's Jenson Button and Takuma Sato, and Minardi's Christijan Albers.
The Petronas engines in the two Sauber cars needed repairs to their water pumps, which were fixed under FIA supervision on Thursday.
RSS